This cover illustration is from one of a series of popular almanacs featuring David Crockett, which continued to promote the frontier exploits of the adventurer well after his death at the Alamo. In it Crockett accounts for his going to Texas as follows: "At the last canvass for a Member of Congress, in our district, I told my constituents, if they did not re-elect me, they might go to hell and I'd go to Texas. I was beaten . . . And I am now about to cut out to that country to help give the Mexicans a licking."

Sánchez Navarro kept a private record in two ledgers detailing his observations both of the siege of Béxar in 1835 and the assault on the Alamo in 1836. In one ledger he drew this plan of the Alamo, identifying the fort’s physical components and its defenses, with comments on their relative strengths.